‘A Lament for 9/11’ by Zachary Dilks

‘Twas so much more on that morn before fall that we all came to mourn as it fell
As the shadows that touched had borne, by its clutch, a scorn we remembered so well
From the sky rained a fiery metal as flowers and petals were mired with soot
Come a dire awakening, staining our safety and breaking the ground underfoot
For to think the unthinkable, sinking unsinkable ships to the depths of the seas
Could arise such a tide of a towering pride, quelling flames in the name of the free
As those towers had fell so the shroud, just as well, of our differences large and mundane
And with brother in hand and sister we banded to stand all as one and the same
How reborn from the ashes of devilish crashes our masses had marched ever brave
From the whole of our souls, through the smoke of the coals, came a oneness we’d take to the grave
Now I wonder years later how such a great crater could ever be filled and forgot
For the the lessons that cost all our dead and our lost have been left in the gutters to rot
What we meet as a difference we treat with indifference and greet one another with hate
And concern for our brothers is strangled and smothered, now hovering darkening fates
For no more do we crawl through the wreckage for all that we call our lovers and friends
But create our own fears in the wake of the tears from the sight that we lost in the end.

Post your 9/11 poetry in the comments section below.

Zachary Dilks is a writer currently residing just outside of Austin, Texas. A toolmaker by trade and a poet by heart, he began pursuing his passion for writing at age 17.

2 Responses

There is a place the angels missed
Too fragile for the worst of this
This middle land where hearts will break
Or be consumed, or just subsist
Or all at once, depending on the day
Let those unhearted who would take
The measure of our rage and pain
Remember, though, that hearts are not in vain–
There were three hundred, many more
Whose fate or choice it was to stay
Until the very towers spent
And this a mending heart cannot ignore
…Let angels weep, and stay away
There is a place these others went
Most caring and most hard of heart
Who damn the devil; and this, only they.